If you are in or represent any of the bands discussed in Harsh Distractions and would like your music removed, please contact me at HarshDistractions@gmail.com and I will remove the post. I'm simply trying to turn people on to records they may not have heard, not end up in a legal battle.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

After a conversation with a friend the other night about internet mixtapes, I uploaded a mix to this website that hosts all sorts of them. There's nothing rare or too out of the ordinary on mine, just a bunch of songs I'd listened to that day. I was mostly just playing around to see how the site worked and thought I'd make one of my own just for fun. Check it out if you're interested. Real update coming soon.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Once No Warning dropped their 7" on Martyr Records it really kicked the doors open wide for ripping off NYHC left and right no matter where you were from - be it Toronto, Detroit or in the case of Frostbite, Wilkes-Barre, PA. Very few people I know like this band and I think the issue a lot of people have is that their direct influence was pretty clear. While a lot of these bands most likely loved classic New York Hardcore bands and wanted to bite riffs from Where the Wild Things Are or the New Breed Comp, the predominant influence overwhelmingly appeared to be No Warning, a contemporary of theirs. This is painfully obvious in the song "Pressure" where the break is a modified version of the break in "Take it or Leave it" by No Warning.

However, I love this 7" and while people may dislike it for any number of reasons, is has held up a lot better for me than a many other things I was into in 2002 and it sticks out to me more than much of what I'm hearing now. The riffs are fast and the breakdowns are hard, but not excessive and the lyrics are interesting and clever without being over the top (i.e. the line "what fucking language am I speaking" which I've always found funny and periodically pops into my head since I bought this record 6 years ago). I know one or two of these dudes went on to be in Cold World (a band that is regularly clowned or hyped based on where you're at, but has some legitimately good songs), but I kind of like Frostbite better even if they were relatively short lived and not entirely original. It is hardcore after all, what hasn't been done before?